Working with relations - Docs

Overview

Let's assume that we have the following collections structure:

The relation fields follow the same rules as any other collection field and can be set/modified by directly updating the field value - with a record id or array of ids, in case a multiple relation is used.

Below is an example that shows creating a new posts record with 2 assigned tags.

import PocketBase from 'pocketbase';

const pb = new PocketBase('http://127.0.0.1:8090');

...

const post = await pb.collection('posts').create({
    'title': 'Lorem ipsum...',
    'tags':  ['TAG_ID1', 'TAG_ID2'],
});

import 'package:pocketbase/pocketbase.dart';

final pb = PocketBase('http://127.0.0.1:8090');

...

final post = await pb.collection('posts').create(body: {
    'title': 'Lorem ipsum...',
    'tags':  ['TAG_ID1', 'TAG_ID2'],
});

Append to multiple relation

To append a single or multiple relation id(s) to an existing value you can use the + field modifier:

import PocketBase from 'pocketbase';

const pb = new PocketBase('http://127.0.0.1:8090');

...

const post = await pb.collection('posts').update('POST_ID', {
    // append single tag
    'tags+': 'TAG_ID1',

    // append multiple tags at once
    'tags+': ['TAG_ID1', 'TAG_ID2'],
})

import 'package:pocketbase/pocketbase.dart';

final pb = PocketBase('http://127.0.0.1:8090');

...

final post = await pb.collection('posts').update('POST_ID', body: {
    // append single tag
    'tags+': 'TAG_ID1',

    // append multiple tags at once
    'tags+': ['TAG_ID1', 'TAG_ID2'],
})

Remove from multiple relation

To remove a single or multiple relation id(s) from an existing value you can use the - field modifier:

import PocketBase from 'pocketbase';

const pb = new PocketBase('http://127.0.0.1:8090');

...

const post = await pb.collection('posts').update('POST_ID', {
    // remove single tag
    'tags-': 'TAG_ID1',

    // remove multiple tags at once
    'tags-': ['TAG_ID1', 'TAG_ID2'],
})

import 'package:pocketbase/pocketbase.dart';

final pb = PocketBase('http://127.0.0.1:8090');

...

final post = await pb.collection('posts').update('POST_ID', body: {
    // remove single tag
    'tags-': 'TAG_ID1',

    // remove multiple tags at once
    'tags-': ['TAG_ID1', 'TAG_ID2'],
})

Expanding relations

You can also expand record relation fields directly in the returned response without making additional requests by using the expand query parameter, eg. ?expand=user,post.tags

Only the relations that the request client can View (aka. satisfies the relation collection's View API Rule) will be expanded.

Nested relation references in expand, filter or sort are supported via dot-notation and up to 6-levels depth.

For example, to list all comments with their user relation expanded, we can do the following:

await pb.collection("comments").getList(1, 30, { expand: "user" })

await pb.collection("comments").getList(perPage: 30, expand: "user")

{
    "page": 1,
    "perPage": 30,
    "totalPages": 1,
    "totalItems": 20,
    "items": [
        {
            "id": "lmPJt4Z9CkLW36z",
            "collectionId": "BHKW36mJl3ZPt6z",
            "collectionName": "comments",
            "created": "2022-01-01 01:00:00.456Z",
            "updated": "2022-01-01 02:15:00.456Z",
            "post": "WyAw4bDrvws6gGl",
            "user": "FtHAW9feB5rze7D",
            "message": "Example message...",
            "expand": {
                "user": {
                    "id": "FtHAW9feB5rze7D",
                    "collectionId": "srmAo0hLxEqYF7F",
                    "collectionName": "users",
                    "created": "2022-01-01 00:00:00.000Z",
                    "updated": "2022-01-01 00:00:00.000Z",
                    "username": "users54126",
                    "verified": false,
                    "emailVisibility": false,
                    "name": "John Doe"
                }
            }
        },
        ...
    ]
}

Back-relations

PocketBase supports also filter, sort and expand for back-relations - relations where the associated relation field is not in the main collection.

The following notation is used: referenceCollection_via_relField (ex. comments_via_post).

For example, lets list the posts that has at least one comments record containing the word "hello":

await pb.collection("posts").getList(1, 30, {
    filter: "comments_via_post.message ?~ 'hello'"
    expand: "comments_via_post.user",
})

await pb.collection("posts").getList(
    perPage: 30,
    filter: "comments_via_post.message ?~ 'hello'"
    expand: "comments_via_post.user",
)

{
    "page": 1,
    "perPage": 30,
    "totalPages": 2,
    "totalItems": 45,
    "items": [
        {
            "id": "WyAw4bDrvws6gGl",
            "collectionId": "1rAwHJatkTNCUIN",
            "collectionName": "posts",
            "created": "2022-01-01 01:00:00.456Z",
            "updated": "2022-01-01 02:15:00.456Z",
            "title": "Lorem ipsum dolor sit...",
            "expand": {
                "comments_via_post": [
                    {
                        "id": "lmPJt4Z9CkLW36z",
                        "collectionId": "BHKW36mJl3ZPt6z",
                        "collectionName": "comments",
                        "created": "2022-01-01 01:00:00.456Z",
                        "updated": "2022-01-01 02:15:00.456Z",
                        "post": "WyAw4bDrvws6gGl",
                        "user": "FtHAW9feB5rze7D",
                        "message": "lorem ipsum...",
                        "expand": {
                            "user": {
                                "id": "FtHAW9feB5rze7D",
                                "collectionId": "srmAo0hLxEqYF7F",
                                "collectionName": "users",
                                "created": "2022-01-01 00:00:00.000Z",
                                "updated": "2022-01-01 00:00:00.000Z",
                                "username": "users54126",
                                "verified": false,
                                "emailVisibility": false,
                                "name": "John Doe"
                            }
                        }
                    },
                    {
                        "id": "tu4Z9CkLW36mPJz",
                        "collectionId": "BHKW36mJl3ZPt6z",
                        "collectionName": "comments",
                        "created": "2022-01-01 01:10:00.123Z",
                        "updated": "2022-01-01 02:39:00.456Z",
                        "post": "WyAw4bDrvws6gGl",
                        "user": "FtHAW9feB5rze7D",
                        "message": "hello...",
                        "expand": {
                            "user": {
                                "id": "FtHAW9feB5rze7D",
                                "collectionId": "srmAo0hLxEqYF7F",
                                "collectionName": "users",
                                "created": "2022-01-01 00:00:00.000Z",
                                "updated": "2022-01-01 00:00:00.000Z",
                                "username": "users54126",
                                "verified": false,
                                "emailVisibility": false,
                                "name": "John Doe"
                            }
                        }
                    },
                    ...
                ]
            }
        },
        ...
    ]
}

Back-relation caveats

By default the back-relation reference is resolved as a dynamic multiple relation field, even when the back-relation field itself is marked as single.
This is because the main record could have more than one single back-relation reference (see in the above example that the comments_via_post expand is returned as array, although the original comments.post field is a single relation).
The only case where the back-relation will be treated as a single relation field is when there is UNIQUE index constraint defined on the relation field.
Back-relation expand is limited to max 1000 records per relation field. If you need to fetch larger number of back-related records a better approach could be to send a separate paginated getList() request to the back-related collection to avoid transferring large JSON payloads and to reduce the memory usage.